4/8/24 solar eclipse chromosphere animation (pretty red stuff)

Chromosphere
total solar eclipse (late totality)
4/8/2024 1:53:58 pm local
eastern limb up

The chromosphere is the layer of red hydrogen plasma that sits above the photosphere--the bright surface of the sun that emits the full spectrum.  during a total solar eclipse the photosphere is completely blocked, allowing one to see red arcs of hydrogen plasma jutting off the side of the sun with the naked eye.  Here are a series of images at short exposure, showing the chromosphere, without the extended outer corona of the sun or the brilliant photosphere.  

Fortunately, I previewed Ha images of the sun shortly before the eclipse, so knew to look for the red arc on the lower right (see video) towards the end of totality.  It was spectacular visually, even through light clouds.  

Be sure to click on full size.

Imaging details:
4/8/24 
Russellville, AR

35 deg 18.366 min N

93 deg 7.962  min W

~1:50-1:54 PM local
nikon D850
AF-S NIKKOR 300mm f/4E PF ED VR
f/5.6, iso 100, 1/6400-1/800 sec exposure
skywatcher star adventurer tracking mount
eclipse orchestrator for automated image capture
oriented solar north up now.  

processing notes:

matched the exposures in photoshop camera raw to 1/3200 sec

aligned the frames on the corona manually so the moon is moving across the stationary sun

because it was much harder to do than auto align on the moon, so why not?

shot continuously at 2 second intervals in the beginning and end.  mid eclipse images were spaced further out due to longer exposures, so i used the "tween" function in photoshop to give a smoother transition between frames (adjusting the number of interpolated frames to the elapsed time).